
Scorched Earth
A Global History of World War II
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Narrated by:
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Jefferson Mays
About this listen
A powerful, unsparing new history of World War II, recasting the conflict as a brutal struggle for survival among declining and ascendant imperial powers
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of an American-led democratic order.
In Scorched Earth, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin dispatches the myth of World War II as a good war. Instead, he depicts the conflict as it truly was: a massive battle beset by vicious racial atrocities, fought between rival empires across huge stretches of Asia and Europe. The war was sparked by German and Japanese invasions that threatened the old powers’ dominance, not by Allied opposition to fascism. The Allies achieved victory not through pluck and democratic idealism but through savage firebombing raids on civilian targets and the slaughter of millions of Soviet soldiers. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as hyper-militarized new imperial powers, each laying claim to former Axis holdings across the globe before turning on one another and triggering a new forever war.
Dramatically rendered and persuasively argued, Scorched Earth shows that World War II marked the culmination of centuries of colonial violence and ushered in a new era of imperial struggle.
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Story
In this swashbuckling adventure story, bestselling historian Alexander Rose draws on long-classified encrypted documents and intercepted German transmissions to unravel, for the first time, the astounding tale of a daring heist cooked up by an owlish egghead and a glory-seeking buccaneer to score the richest prize on the high seas.
By: Alexander Rose
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So Very Small
- How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs–and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease
- By: Thomas Levenson
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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“An elegant, wide-ranging history” (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease that reveals as much about human reasoning—and the pitfalls of ego—as it does about microbes.
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A gripping account of a triumph of humanity, and our limitations
- By Something Innocuous on 05-12-25
By: Thomas Levenson
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Apocalypse
- How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
- By: Lizzie Wade
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: What happened? The good news is, we’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy worlds, but create them anew.
By: Lizzie Wade
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The Work of Empire
- War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines
- By: Justin F. Jackson
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands.
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Chain of Fire
- Campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-98
- By: Peter Hart
- Narrated by: Graham Mack
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1880s, control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield into which Prime Minister Gladstone did not want to step—until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war. It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought, and civilians caught in the crossfire. Among the British officers were figures who would later adopt starring roles in the First World War, such as Egyptian Army sapper Captain Herbert Kitchener.
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adequate book with heinous narration
- By TedJameson on 05-23-25
By: Peter Hart
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The Buried City
- Unearthing the Real Pompeii
- By: Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Jamie Bulloch - translator
- Narrated by: Nick Biadon
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Buried City, Gabriel Zuchtriegel takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of Pompeii and reveals new archaeological finds that are being unearthed at the site’s biggest dig in a generation. As director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, Zuchtriegel presents a uniquely intimate perspective on this city that was tragically destroyed and frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Among the ruins, we find unmade beds, dishes left drying, and bodies of victims encased in ash, but Zuchtriegel shows that we’ve only begun to understand this fascinating place.
By: Gabriel Zuchtriegel, and others
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The World's Game
- Reflections on Western Culture
- By: Frederic Raphael
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In this epic narrative, Frederic Raphael explores the most significant moments, ideas and figures that have shaped the world’s stage. He takes us on a journey through history: from the reigns of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, to Plato and Socrates and the origins of philosophy, the turning point of World War Two and the invention of the atom bomb, and, finally, the social and cultural divisions of modern day. It is often a story of conflict: the rise of anti-Semitism, the tensions between science and faith, progress and strife, comedy and ruthlessness.
By: Frederic Raphael
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The Fate of the Generals
- MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
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Fate of the Generals
- By Doodlealleytap on 06-01-25
By: Jonathan Horn
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The Nazi Mind
- Twelve Warnings from History
- By: Laurence Rees
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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How could the SS have committed the crimes they did? How were the killers who shot Jews at close quarters able to perpetrate this horror? Why did commandants of concentration and death camps willingly—often enthusiastically—oversee mass murder? How could ordinary Germans have tolerated the removal of the Jews? In The Nazi Mind, bestselling historian Laurence Rees seeks answers to some of the most perplexing questions surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust.
By: Laurence Rees
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The Year God Died
- Jesus and the Roman Empire in 33 AD
- By: James Lacey
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 31 AD, after the Roman senators murdered Lucius Sejanus, the Roman Emperor Tiberius's closest confidant, the Empire was forever changed. If Sejanus had not been murdered, Jesus would never have been crucified. This profound connection between the lives of Sejanus and Jesus is the first of many revelations in this startling reexamination of the Roman world in which Jesus walked. With new evidence and meticulous research, Dr. James Lacey weaves a majestic and accurate description of who Jesus was.
By: James Lacey